(a) kiss up, kick down – that is a bad joke, and is rather “disrespectful” in education. My interpretation is that such culture of “pleasing” others in order to achieve one’s goals seems to be overly “selfish” and egoistic, where a professional could lose his/her integrity if he or she practises in such a way in the profession. I think it is important to share our views on this “practice” critically, especially in institutions, rather than shying away from examining the impact of such practice or “cultures” that may influence our reputation as an educator.

(b) the ethical meltdown in young people.

Howard emphasizes the five different areas of ethics at this digital age:

1. Identity

2. Privacy

3. Ownership and authorship

4. Credibility and trustworthiness

5. Participation

Here Howard comments that a lot of assumptions about these areas of ethics have to be rethought.

I think there are lots of assumptions relating to the issues of digital identity, privacy and participation for both educators and learners, and how these would impact on ones education and learning in a virtual environment.

With the opening of this Pandora’s box, I am interested in thinking about some aspects of five minds and issues that Howard mentioned.

“I don’t seem to need to ‘know’ someone in order to share online. Recognizing an online identity may help but it’s neither the only deciding factor nor the most important for me anymore.”

How is commitment decided by you? I do commit in sharing based on efforts and time, but also the trust I have on the other persons, in terms of their authenticity in identity, the intention and content quality of their sharing of ideas or information.

I posted on the FB: Do you think you really know who one is when connection is behind a digital identity? Would that account for the trust level we associate with networking?

Jaap’s response: People do not care, they do not know. Businesses use digital fake identities to foster sales, and nobody wants to know. There is a lot of trust.

My response: If people do not care, and do not know, how would relationship be built? Relationship without caring may impact on learning, as the interaction becomes superficial. Imagine the feelings of making a phone call to a service company, where one is directed just by a virtual voice, press one, two, and then followed by a recording telling us what to do… What would be our impression on the business? You are right in that businesses use digital fake identities to foster sales, or even boost up the market share with advertising tactics (keep pressing the likes, or positive voting on the sites). My question is: what ethical issues and distrust would emerge with these practices. I don’t know if I would really trust these e-businesses, in the long run. With the same token, if this happens in networking, where people hid themselves with fake digital identities and practise with unethical camouflage, then this would impact on the trust level among networkers. Who would like to network with a troll who pretends to be an evangelist? I think this is becoming an issue, especially when networking online without an understanding of “each others” in the networks. That also explains why I am trying to learn a bit more about others before I would embark on an e-journey of networking in new networks. Would like to learn about your views on “a lot of trust”. Would disclosure of some of the others’ background be a consideration of trust?

So, for me, I could share without knowing much about the other person initially in virtual or online networks. However, for such connection to be sustainable, I reckon I would like to find out more about the person behind the ideas, or blogs, or postings, through further inquiry, or a dialogue with comments, and not just consuming the ideas of the blog post, or creating a blog post in response. There is a deeper level of understanding required on the other person before I could fully engage into the learning conversation. That’s my experience throughout the MOOCs and networked learning.

Do you really know who you are connected to? Is connection to ideas more important to persons? May be when I am just trying to learn about ideas, and not looking for further conversation or exchange of ideas, then I don’t need to know about the identity of others.

That is also the challenge on openness and identity that I shared in my previous post:

It is a personal choice, and although I am in favor of openness, I could understand that openness is not viewed as a nominal practice for many professions. This is especially so, for certain professions like medical profession, where duty of care, professional accountability and responsibility comes before any disclosure of incidents or experience that relate to patients or medical care. Exposure of one’s true identity (both as a professional, an educator or student) might have an impact on one’s professional identity, personal security and privacy – like those working in sensitive professions – in defence or police operations. I also think there are significant issues not addressed when debating about political or social aspects in public which may relate to individual organisations, especially when such debates/discourse could be viewed and judged by the public, present or potential employers.

What is the impact of technology on education policy? Here Rich says in his post:

Who’s missing? People who should be getting comfortable with the disruptive forces in higher education. There are almost no university administrators or technology managers. EDUCAUSE is nowhere to be seen. There are dozens of websites that devoted to studying and commenting on policy issues, but if they are aware of Change11, they are silent about it.

Is Change11 or MOOC-fication the wave of the future? Probably not. It’s an experiment.

Why? Isn’t it a huge challenge for administrators and technology managers to comment on the policy issues, and technological changes needed to advance and innovate in open spaces? What are the problems that administrators and technology managers are trying to solve in their institutions? There are even urges for reforms in universities. There are also big and small fixes in higher education, where big fixes relate to policy changes and small fixes relate to technology innovation.

May be what MOOC is trying to tackle are the Wicked Problems associated with some of the big and small fixes in higher education, Social Complexity, and the affordance and disruption of technology and the impacts on distance education, training and networked learning.

The more I explored about the wicked problems, the more I started to question the assumptions behind the problems and solution to distance education and networked learning.

Here Nancy Roberts concluded that:

We learn that wicked problems are socially defined so that getting the “whole system in the room” to enable people to learn from one another is very useful. And given the constraints and complexity of crisis situations, social learning is more likely to be successful if it remains as self-organizing, complex adaptive system that co-evolves as stakeholders meet, interact, and inform one another’s actions. Ultimately, we learnt that to lead, facilitate and participate in such collective undertakings require an act of faith. It begins with the hope that there is a better way of doing things, a recognition that failure is possible, and a willingness to ‘ trust the process’ without guarantees of a particular outcome.

Other wicked problems raised relating to the education and technology include:

Declining attention span

Lack of critical thinking

Fragmentation of information and learning

All these problems also relate to changes necessary in education and learning.

Learning about change is not always comfortable for people, as Jenny put it so well in finding and losing your voice in the collective that I found it resonating. “I think the actual binding (particularly if that binding is going to be long-term) has to be at a deeper and more individual level. Whilst the collective may be made up of a whole array of resources, it is also made up of individuals, whose learning will be determined by their perceptions of their individual identities in relation to the collective.” I shared my views on individual identity here.

I agree with many points of Amcunningham’s post, especially the paradox of openness, where there is no easy and fast rules to guide educators/professionals to be open, or not to be open. It is a personal choice, and although I am in favor of openness, I could understand that openness is not viewed as a nominal practice for many professions. This is especially so, for certain professions like medical profession, where duty of care, professional accountability and responsibility comes before any disclosure of incidents or experience that relate to patients or medical care. Exposure of one’s true identity (both as a professional, an educator or student) might have an impact on one’s professional identity, personal security and privacy – like those working in sensitive professions – in defence or police operations. I also think there are significant issues not addressed when debating about political or social aspects in public which may relate to individual organisations, especially when such debates/discourse could be viewed and judged by the public, present or potential employers.

Photo: Online article large

So, why would one risk sharing personal views online with his/her true identity, or revealing ones’ persona in the postings, comments or visits? Should we encourage and support our learners and/or fellow educators to use their real names instead of pseudonyms? What are the implications and consequences of exposing “ourselves” with real identity in public or open online or virtual networks? These are all questions that we all want to know and explore. I hope Amcunningham would have an enjoyable time with her symposium session. I have posted here for further conversation.

1. Students reporting higher perceived social presence scores also perceived they learned more from the course than students with low perceived social presence scores. This indicates a relationship between social presence and perceived learning.

2. Students who were most satisfied with their instructors also believed they learned more from their courses than students who were less satisfied with their instructors. This indicates a relationship between instructor satisfaction and perceived learning.

3. Students with high overall social presence scores also indicated they were highly satisfied with their instructor. This implies that students’ perceptions of social presence were related to the perceptions of their instructors as having a satisfactory online presence in terms of amount of interaction and/or quality of that interaction.

They conclude:

“interaction among participants is critical in learning and cognitive development [31, 32]. Sociocognitive theorists describe learning as an interactive group process in which learners actively construct knowledge and then build upon that knowledge through the exchange of ideas with others [11, 30]. These theories combined with the findings of this study indicate that there is a “better” model for online courses. The model should not only present the information and materials to students but also incorporate the social aspects of learning in both the design and instruction of online courses.

The immediate implications of this research extend into the realms of both research and practice.”

My questions:

1. Is the physical or “virtual” presence of the instructor & students an essential element of learning in an online course?

2. Will the learners learn more with social presence? How will social presence affect learners’ learning?

3. If learning is an interactive group process, then how would such a group form in an online course? How important is group learning?

4. What happens if the group is based on a community of bloggers and/or twitters? To what extent would learners be able to “construct knowledge” and then build upon that knowledge?

5. What happens to the lurkers? How would lurkers (legitimate peripheral participants (LPP) be able to construct knowledge and then build upon that knowledge if there is little exchange of ideas with others? What learning strategies could be recommended for lurkers or LPP in an online course?

6. How will social media impact on student’s learning?

7. What would be the impact of PLE on student’s social presence?

8. What would be the role of instructor in an online course where PLE is adopted by students? Instructors as aggregators? As curators? As sensemaker? As wayfinder? ………

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I would like to relate to Alex Kuskis’ comments provided here where he points to: The unaffordability of the American campus model, based on tuition price increases year after year, with students incurring immense debts, leading to a student loans crisis and financial bubble that will sooner or later burst, just as the housing bubble … Continue reading → […]